This invention relates to measuring articles. The invention is particularly, but not exclusively, concerned with measuring articles which are flexible and can be laid flat, and especially textile articles.
It is, of course, a simple task to measure a textile article using a flexible tape measure, but there are occasions when many similar articles have to be measured and manual measurement using a tape measure is time-consuming and tedious with the possibility of error. One such occasion arises in the testing of shrinkage, where a batch of garments is measured repeatedly after laundering treatments. It is clearly essential for such testing that reasonably accurate measurements be made of small length differences on articles where the points between which measurement are to be made are not necessarily well defined.
Such a situation suggests automatic rather than manual measurement. However, no satisfactory method for automatic measuring of flexible articles such as garments which have inherently complicated shapes has hitherto proved practicable.
The present invention provides a measuring method which can be more or less automated with savings in time and expense and which will yield accurate measurements which can be automatically recorded.